Tropical Singapore, a global financial and transit hub, has reported just over 240 Zika cases since the first locally infected case was detected on August 27, and media has quoted the deputy health minister as saying the virus was “here to stay”.
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He said travel to the Olympics would make up “less than 1 percent” of all travel to South American countries affected by the Zika virus.
Populations in India, Indonesia and Nigeria are some of the most vulnerable to transmission, the researchers said.
Malaysia yesterday confirmed its first locally transmitted case of Zika infection in a man living in the eastern Malaysian state of Sabah.
Benign in most people, Zika has been linked to a form of severe birth defect called microcephaly which causes newborns’ heads to be abnormally small.
One of the most fundamental questions in this current epidemic is why countries like Brazil, the epicenter of the current epidemic, have reported almost 2,000 cases of microcephaly and other brain abnormalities, while countries like Colombia have reported fewer than three dozen cases.
Meanwhile, the virus continues to infect new countries, including most recently Singapore, which reported 189 confirmed cases Friday. “Wherever there is a competent vector, in this case the Aedes aegypti (mosquito), there is a risk that the virus will spread”.
Heymann, chairman of the World Health Organization advisory committee, said Friday that considerable gaps remain in understanding Zika and the complications it causes – including babies with serious neurological problems – and World Health Organization concluded that the outbreak remains a global emergency.
Speaking after a meeting of the WHO’s emergency committee on Zika, its chairman David Heymann said the disease continued to constitute an worldwide health emergency although the risk to people attending the Paralympics in Rio de Janeiro this month was low.
Harrison added some perspective to the Zika scare, though, when she said the virus isn’t almost as risky to men or women who aren’t pregnant.
Nurses set up a mosquito tent over a hospital bed, as part of a precautionary protocol for patients who are infected by Zika, to show the media at Farrer Park Hospital in Singapore on September 2, 2016.
Salama said that while Zika samples from the country appear to be from the African strain, it hasn’t been determined whether the African strain of the virus might also be responsible for the neurological problems.
The disease can cause fever, rash, joint pain, and redness in the whites of the eye.
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Although there have not been any Zika transmissions or infected mosquitos in Orlando, the area’s theme parks have been offering free bug spray to help quell guest fears.
